Digital Workshop

Would it be possible to have a Digital Workshop blog so we can keep up to date on development? Your development team could post what they're working on next every few weeks and keep customers informed.

Would be a better idea than a newsletter and easier to implement.

Joe

Great idea!

I understand exactly where you are coming from here;

but -

DW live in a commercially hostile environment.

If DW's competitors knew what developments were in the pipeline, then you can bet your life they would either be incorporating those developments into their own product or planning suitable countering marketing to ensure sound competive advantages and points of difference occur between DW's Opus and their product, whatever it may be.

The forum is a great place to suggest improvements that you would like to see in the next version or you can even shoot off an email to DW if you want a little privacy.

Over to you for comment

Cheers

Graham

I'd welcome a blog, if only to see that something is actually happening.... and does DW even have many commercial rivals to worry about now? It seems to be a field that people are getting out of with the onward march of Adobe (AIR etc.) and Microsoft (Silverlight etc.). I know Mediator is still there, but it seems to be even slower than Opus on the development front at the moment. There's a sense that smaller firms are being squeezed out and development is all but stopped. Who will bother with Mediator or Opus if Adobe's AIR really takes off... it's going to be free, cross-platform and you can use your own development tool of choice to write your programs. Of course, if DW concentrated more on the Opus Flex output, as many of us have been requesting for a couple of years, Opus Flex could be our development tool of choice for AIR. If not, it's probably going to be left standing...

... I don't see Adobe or Microsoft as rivals in this area. Opus has one really great advantage: It is easy!!! to use even for non programmers. I myself use Flash for some reasons but love to work with Opus.

You feel with every mouse click that Opus was made for people who need to create interactive applications e.g. for education or instruction purposes without being a programmer. Try to do this with Flash or the upcoming Microsoft products. I think it will not work.

I agree that elaborating the flex functions of Opus is essential to survive on the authoring tool market. This in combination with an easy to use SCORM-output will make Opus an unique tool which can IMHO be very successful in the future.

T.

Please setup your own blogs so we can look over YOUR shoulders to see if YOU are working!!!! Spend some time learning ALL the current features of OPUS before you start demanding more from DW, and monitoring their programmers with a development blog.

When I started selling interactive sales presentations back in the mid-80s, I called on software companies. Often the twits in marketing would say, "oh, our programmers can do that." But the truth was their programmers never did because they didn't understand what to show/say to sell the software, and they were too busy fixing bugs in their custom COBAL mainframe applications. If you are a real application programmer who writes code in HTML, then using Air or Silverlight might make sense, but if you are really THAT smart, then you should be fixing the code in the applications you were hired to write, not playing "marketing department presentation creator."

OPUS is NOT a tool for building applications, nor is it a tool for computer programmers. It IS for people who build multimedia, interactive marketing and sales presentation. They are NOT programmers. They need the buffet menuing system in OPUS to point & click at the features they want, while OPUS writes the actual code (behind the scenes) for them.

Please let us know of ONE "for profit" organization which has their developers write a blog to let everyone (including competitors) know what they are doing. I'll then apologize for calling this suggestion on the Wishlist a -- really BAD idea.

I agree with Tarantoga, we are not really competing with Adobe and Microsoft (but many of our customers think we are). We complement their products - in the same way you don't use a chain saw to prune roses. We're certainly not currently competing with Air and Silverlight but that may change.

Our intention has been to try to be the soho/prosumer market alternative to Director and Toolbook for users who didn't want to make the investment in time and money which those programs require, but still wanted to achieve something of what they could. This is the same way as Paint Shop Pro complemented Adobe Photoshop. But that also means that shrewd professionals see a tool which can do some things much more cost-effectively. Understandably those professionals want to see Opus do as much as possible because it makes life easier and more profitable for them. We try to oblige but we have fewer resouces than Microsoft and Adobe so we have to pick our fights rather than take on all comers in terms of functions etc.

As I understand it Air and Sliverlight are different to Opus, they are ways of putting applications and interfaces onto web "applications". This is because the big boys expect everyone to be using software in a web-centric environment before long and that developers will need a simple way to develop apps to run in this new environment not just design web pages.

In addition to providing a subset of this functionality for the prosumer market we also look at real world solutions. As a result we have just been invited to tender for a major contract with a multinational company in direct compeition with Adobe and Microsoft. What is really interesting is that the key requirements of this tender are the two things we put into v6 which the company concerned saw during our trial period and immediately wanted. Now, to compete with our innovation, Adobe and Micorosft will have to cobble together a bespoke solution which we are providing off the shelf.

Our advantage in such tenders is that we have the innovation first. So I'm afraid we won't be letting developers blog about what they're doing anytime soon. And in any case you would surely rather they spent their time developing the software than talking about it

What I can say is that we shall shortly have a Service Release available which allows you to switch off the aspects of Vista which cause problems on some systems and we are working on an update to SCORM support. Personally I'd like to see video support in Flex, kerning for text and better multilanguage support but Dave will ultimately decide what we can do and when.

Hope that helps.

Paul Harris

Paul,
Thanks for the comment--I'm just really glad to hear that development of Opus is continuing. It is very re-assuring for me to hear that development is still being done. I can't speak for others, but I was concerned by the lack of any kind of information from DW.
Rather than a blog---I think it would be very good to get some kind of regular announcement from DW---it doesn't need to give any secrets away.


rgds

Sandy

Thanks for that Paul,
It's always good to hear from the man at the top.

Paul G

Glad to hear a response too. I would also like to hear regular updates from Digital Workshop, not necessary giving away company secrets just regular communications, tutorials, news.